For the first time since spring semester 2012, I will not be teaching a freshman composition class during fall 2014 at East Carolina. I am relieved.

Freshman comp classes are labor-intensive to the max chiefly because the only way to help students become better writers is to take a serious look at their written work and give copious feedback about the good, the bad, the ugly and the down-right silly.

If I must teach comp, I prefer teaching the first comp class. I have students produce four major essays taken through multiple drafts. I assign a narrative (tell me a story), a process analysis (tell me how to do something), a comparison-contrast essay and a persuasive essay modeled after an op-ed piece.

The assignment asks each student to choose a process he or she knows how to do well enough to explain to others and then explain that process. Two specific skills this paper requires are task analysis and proper ordering of steps. This type of thinking is necessary for anyone who has been charged with writing any kind of procedure document for a real world situation.

Some of the strangest papers are these process analysis essays. This past spring I received a paper from a student from Africa. He wrote his essay on his family’s tradition of goat-slaughtering. My initial response was: “Are you kidding me?” However, as I read, I realized that slaughtering a goat is not really different from field dressing a deer.

A female student was assigned to a masonry class in high school when she had requested carpentry. Since the carpentry class was full, someone in the guidance office thought masonry would serve her purpose. She related the story of that experience in her narrative.

For the process paper, she demonstrated her technical knowledge of brick-laying in an analysis about the proper way to build a brick wall. She explained terminology the reader would need to understand. Then she detailed the necessary tools, ingredients and method for mixing mortar, and some of the finer points of bricks that were new to me. Last, she took me through the process. Although I doubt I will ever build a brick wall, one of the reasons I enjoy the process papers so much is I learn from them.

One of the most insightful types of papers outlines the mysterious (to the male mind) process of applying make-up. Just the items needed to do this task boggle my mind. One piece of a paragraph advises: “The products needed for the face include face primer, foundation, concealer for both under the eye and for the face, setting powder, bronzer, highlighter, and blush. You need a setting spray to keep make up from smudging or wearing off throughout the day.”

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I had no idea.

My favorite papers share family recipes from Aunt Karon’s yamallow, sort of a sweet potato casserole, to buffalo chicken dip, to Grandma’s fluffy brownies. Recipes, as you can imagine, offer wonderful subjects for process papers since recipes demand the exact type of task analysis and logical ordering of steps that thinking through a process requires.

And, yes, I award a little extra credit for those who bring samples — of recipes.

One of the side benefits for students who write about a recipe is that some of them actually get with the family member who prepares the dish to watch. After all, “a pinch,” “a dash,” and a “splash” are not exactly empirical terms.

All of us probably remember our own grandmothers uttering some akin to these words:

“Lord, child, I don’t measure — I just cook.”

Some papers by former cheerleaders gave me nightmares. Granddaughter Taylor was a cheerleader at G.R. Whitfield, so when a former cheerleader discussed the process for back tucks or flying stunts — outlining how the stunt could go wrong — my chest tightened. I had seen Taylor do some of those exact stunts.

I have concluded some processes are better kept from adoring grandfathers.

Mike Parker is a columnist for The Free Press. You can reach him at mparker16@suddenlink.net or in care of this newspaper.